JIRA issue history in the context of project issues

Today we’d like to introduce new feature of the JIRA Replay plugin, which makes it easier to check what happened to an issue during the workflow.

It may help to answer questions “why did it take so long when In Code Review/other statuses?” or “how many other issues were in flight at the time this one was created?“.
Answers to these questions are relevant especially when using Kanban or Scrum, as they may uncover reasons for problems with the flow of work or the process itself (e.g. reasons for breaking Work In Progress – WIP – limit).

Existing JIRA issue history

By default, JIRA issue history is shown in the form of list of changes, as below:

This doesn’t tell anything about the context of the issue while it was “In Progress” or in any other status. Knowing what other issues were in flight at the same time may, as an example, make it obvious why it took so long. The answer may be large amount of serious defects detected around the same time. This in turn may point to some interesting conclusions.

In some cases, list of historical changes is simply not enough. It may be enlightening to see the issue in the context of the whole project.

JIRA Replay follow an issue feature

JIRA Replay allows you to do exactly this – track JIRA issue history in the context of other issues. Context may mean project issues or any other issues selected with a filter. Video below shows an example:

Just select an issue and use playback controls to play changes or jump to any point on the timeline as usual. The screen will follow selected issue.